Colombia’s Petro accuses Israeli cyberfirm BlackCore of election interference

Laura Gamba Fadul

Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused Israeli cyber-intelligence company BlackCore of executing a massive digital disinformation campaign to manipulate the outcome of the country’s recent presidential elections.

The accusation was made on Friday following a razor-thin victory by challenger Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal defense attorney openly endorsed by US President Donald Trump. De la Espriella won the June 21 runoff election by a margin of less than 1% over the ruling party’s candidate, Ivan Cepeda.

Petro wrote on US social media platform X that BlackCore deployed hundreds of thousands of automated accounts to distort public perception in the run-up to the vote.

“BlackCore, the Israeli company, deployed 500,000 bots—fake profiles—to manipulate the Colombian electorate with millions of lies about Ivan and me,” Petro said.

Describing the alleged interference as “the hardest blow to national sovereignty since the Spanish reconquest,” Petro announced a week ago that he would refuse to recognize “the legitimacy of the incoming government.” The outgoing leader has subsequently called on his supporters to launch a nationwide mobilization on July 20.

The claims build on allegations made by Petro on the night of the runoff, when early counts began favoring De la Espriella. At the time, Petro asserted that the National Registry’s vote-counting software had been “compromised,” citing detected alterations in the IP addresses of several core government servers.

In response to the mounting fraud allegations, Colombia’s National Registry and the National Electoral Council (CNE) issued a joint statement confirming the total transparency and security of the vote-counting software, explicitly denying any unauthorized modifications to government server IP addresses.

Their findings were backed by international electoral observation missions from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union, both of which validated the integrity of the June 21 runoff results and stated that no evidence of systemic digital manipulation or cyber interference was detected during the polling process.

The accusations against BlackCore follow an official report issued last month by France’s disinformation watchdog, Viginum. The French cybersecurity agency formally accused BlackCore of using hundreds of coordinated proxy accounts to target pro-Palestine figures and disrupt democratic processes worldwide.

While Petro condemned the election results, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly celebrated De la Espriella’s victory, signaling a major geopolitical realignment for Colombia.

Netanyahu extended his congratulations on X, framing the victory as part of an expanding conservative alliance.

“Congratulations to President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella. I look forward to working with you to strengthen the bond between Israel and Colombia. Israel’s friends continue to win. Long live the Isaac Agreements!” Netanyahu stated, referring to an effort to strengthen Israel’s ties with Latin American countries.